Christmas tree collection raises £27k for children's hospice
Christmas tree collections raised more than £27,000 for a Wiltshire children's hospice.
Volunteers, local businesses and supporters took away 1,935 festive firs from homes around Wiltshire and Dorset.
Hundreds of people who agreed to have the charity take away their trees made donations to help provide its lifeline of care for local families. The Julia's House fundraising team was supported by volunteers from local businesses, including Jane James and Associates and Lexus Swindon, who kindly sponsored the promotion of this year's Christmas tree collection in Wiltshire.
The trees collected from the Devizes, Pewsey and Marlborough areas were then taken to The Old Potato Yard in Devizes and The Farm at Avebury, and recycled as chippings for use on local farmland.
In its fourth collection year, the charity picked up 605 Christmas trees in Wiltshire and a further 1330 trees in Dorset, raising £27,305 in total from donations.
That's the equivalent of more than 27 weeks of respite care for a seriously ill child, enabling the rest of their family to have a much-needed break from caring around the clock.
The children's hospice recently announced it was facing a £1 million budget deficit this year and feared services may need to be cut due to the rising costs of care.
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Last year, it cost the charity around £5 million to provide its critical and compassionate care for families of children living with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions. Just eight per cent of the charity's costs are covered by ongoing government support – the rest is kindly donated by supporters.
Community fundraiser Claudia Hazelton said, 'We'd like to say a huge thank you to everyone who booked to have their tree collected by Julia's House, and also to our hard working and committed volunteers from local businesses and organisations who provided vans, chippers and helping hands to get the job done – it was a real team effort and very rewarding.
'We're thrilled to have raised these vital funds to support our care for local families, and we hope to make our charity tree collection even bigger and better next year.'
Julia's House is Wiltshire's local children's hospice charity. The charity relies almost entirely on donations from the local community to fund its critical respite breaks and compassionate care for the county's most seriously ill children and their families – in the Julia's House hospice in Devizes and in families' homes.
For more information on fundraising, volunteering and working for the charity, visit www.juliashouse.org
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